Content by Keyword: Poverty, Income, and Assets

This study sought to understand how state fiscal capacity affected spending on social welfare programs. It found that low fiscal capacity states spent less on social welfare programs than did high fiscal capacity states and that these differences were greater for cash assistance and non-health social services than for health-related programs.

Study findings emerged from several methods and data sources, including analyses of spending trends, econometric models of state spending on different types of social welfare functions, and the case studies of the six poor states (Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, and West Virginia). Five of the six case study states wer

How does a state’s fiscal capacity affect its spending on social welfare programs? Do “poor states” (i.e., states with low fiscal capacity as measured by per capita personal income) differ from richer states in how much they spend on social welfare programs or how they allocate expenditures across cash assistance, Medicaid, and social servic

1 Because we are interested in the effects of state fiscal capacity on social welfare spending, we consider only spending that goes through the budgets of state and local governments, not direct expenditures by the federal government. Thus, we do not analyze the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Food Stamp Program (FSP), or, with some

Social welfare programs strive to improve the well-being of needy and vulnerable populations. The fact that states spend different amounts on these programs is well known, but why they do so is less understood, including the extent to which differences are affected by states' relative fiscal capacity, defined as their ability to raise revenue thro

Final Report
July 2004
Prepared for: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
Prepared by:
The Lewin Group
and its subcontractor
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government
Contract No.: 282-98-0016; Task Order 34

Part I: HISTORY AND DESIGN
Chapters
Introduction and History
Experimental Treatments and Expected Responses to Them
Sample Selection and Distribution
Issues in the Measurement of Experimental Effects
The Payment System in SIME/DIME
The Information System Summary
Part II: IMPLEMENTATION
Chapters

The interested reader is referred to the two-volume Final Report of the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983) for a complete discussion of the design, administration, and results of SIME/DIME. Below is the Table of Contents for that report.

1. These correspond to 95%, 120%, and 140% of the official poverty line for a family of four ($4,000 in 1971 dollars). The relationship of these levels to the poverty line was preserved throughout the experimental period by adjusting the dollar guarantee levels regularly according to increases in the Consumer Price Index, as in the poverty lin

With respect to the counseling/training subsidy results, two major points deserve emphasis. Participation in both the counseling and training-education programs was strongly related to the amount of the subsidy. Both the 50 percent and 100 percent subsidy plans induced statistically significant increases in formal schooling (although not work-

The work responses to be expected from transfer programs of varying generosity are much more precisely know as a result of SIME/DIME than they were before. It is now possible, as a consequence of the SIME/DIME labor supply analysis, to predict with some confidence how much more or less people will work as a result of new policy initiatives and w

How can the SIME/DIME results be used as a guide to the possible effects on family structure of new public policy initiatives? The analyst themselves "caution the reader against uncritically extrapolating from these or any other summary measure of the effects of SIME/DIME on marital dissolution." (11) They stress as reasons for this statement

Pages

Survey Disclaimer

According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a valid OMB control number. The valid OMB control number for this information collection is 0990-0379. The time required to complete this information collection is estimated to average 5 minutes per response, including the time to review instructions, search existing data resources, gather the data needed, and complete and review the information collection. If you have comments concerning the accuracy of the time estimate(s) or suggestions for improving this form, please write to: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, OS/OCIO/PRA, 200 Independence Ave., S.W., Suite 336-E, Washington D.C. 20201, Attention: PRA Reports Clearance Officer.